Monday, February 14, 2005

The Drudge Guide to Chris Rock

If you've read my column about Matt Drudge, you know I'm not a fan of the guy. For some reason, Fox News loves him (especially that fair and balanced debate show, Hannity and Colmes) and puts him on the air whenever they can. You know, so he can wow us with a bit of gossip someone passed his way.

There was a big playup tonight on Fox for H&C and their guest, Matt Drudge, who was going to talk about, among other things, some comments made by Chris Rock regarding the Oscars.

Just so we're clear about Chris Rock: Chris is a stand-up comic (one of the best, in my opinion) and actor. He was on Saturday Night Live a few seasons and hosted his own award-winning show on HBO.

Chris is a big fan of, shall we say, colorful language. In other words, rated 'M' for mature.

That being said, Matt Drudge has an "exclusive" item on his web page: Chris Rock made jokes about the Oscars! And he said only gay people watch them! DAMN THAT CRAZY BLACK MAN!

Here's a link to the Drudge story on Chris Rock. Reading it, I'm almost 100% convinced that Matt Drudge has never heard a single second of any of Chris' stand-up concerts. Otherwise, he'd realize that Chris was probably saying shit to be funny.

Take this paragraph:

"Veteran members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have grown concerned over the choice of Chris Rock as host of this month's awards show, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. Concern deepened after Rock claimed only gays watch the Oscars! "I never watched the Oscars. Come on, it's a fashion show," Rock recently declared. "What straight black man sits there and watches the Oscars? Show me one!" Rock added: "Awards for art are f---ing idiotic."

You know, I'm with Chris on this one here. Awards for art are fucking idiotic. Art is art. How can you say that something is the best kind of art? "And the Oscar for the best renaissance painting goes to...Botticelli's Birth of Venus!!"

As Drudge has not provided a context to Chris' statements, I'm going to take a wild stab and guess they were made as part of his stand-up act. Or within the context of Chris Rock saying shit to be funny, such as part of an interview.

Here's another thing: Drudge does not say when Chris said the things Drudge says he said. That's a typical Drudge motif: failure to perform basic fact checking. Drudge just says "Rock recently declared." What is recently? A week ago? Last year? Two months ago? Who knows. Drudge doesn't. Although it would make sense that the remarks were made months ago. The Drudge touch that means so much.

The article goes on about how Academy members are "concerned" about Rock being the host. They just now realized that Chris Rock is a comedian? Did they pull his name out of a hat and say "Chris Rock? Who is he? Dunno, let's make him the host for the Oscars!"

I can't wait for the Hannity and Colmes transcript for tonight's show to become available. Sean probably got all upset: "And if this had been a conservative saying what he said, the liberal media would be all over it!" And they'd cut to Drudge (wearing that stupid-ass Fedora) and he'd make some vague statements about anonymous Academy members worrying that Rock was hosting. Back to Sean babbling on and on and on how a conservative wouldn't get away with it and how the liberal media would be all over it. And they probably went on for two straight hours. In fact, they're probably still talking about it. And then it probably will take life on conservative message boards.